This delicate flower was created in a lab - and could revolutionise surgery

The delicate flower bud bursts into life, opening layer after layer of brightly coloured petals, first large and red, then small and purple, and finally the innermost ones - tiny and orange.
But as convincing as the bloom may seem, it is not a work of nature. Scientists created the flowering bud after learning how to make polymer sheets that can be programmed to change shape over time.
Designed and built by a postgraduate student, Qiaoxi Li, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the artificial flower is a few centimetres wide and takes two hours to fully open.
“I was so... read more

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